5 Celebrities Who Are Secretly Nintendo Nerds

Celebrities might be elevated to the high status of actors and athletes that make headlines and entertain millions, but many of them still seek out their own entertainment through video games.

Mentioning gaming as a hobby isn’t too unusual for celebrities, but one new innovation from Nintendo appears to have found a spot within celebrities’ hectic schedules. The Nintendo Switch offers a convenient hybrid of TV-based and on-the-go gaming, a console that’s just at home plugged into a flat screen as it is when on a tour bus or a cross-country flight.

Because of this new console, images of celebrities battling it out in Mario Kart 8 or traversing the vast, open world of Breath of the Wild have become more common. Ranging from professional wrestlers to socialites to musicians, some of the celebrities who have shown themselves as being Nintendo fans both recently and in the past might surprise you.

Paris Hilton

The first celebrity on this list might not have picked up a Nintendo Switch just yet, but she definitely made news over a decade ago when she was spotted with a Nintendo GameCube.

Above are some photos that some might remember from 2002, a year where Paris Hilton was photographed while holding onto a Nintendo GameCube by its nifty handle. Even with the handle, the older Nintendo console still wasn’t anywhere near as portable as the Switch, but that didn’t stop Hilton from showing up with it on more than one occasion. From the Nintendo GameCube to the Game Boy Advance SP, Hilton appeared to be quite the gamer. A lesser-known piece of Hilton trivia that many might’ve missed though is that Hilton actually had her own game at one point, a mobile game that was called Paris Hilton’s Diamond Quest. She promoted the game once at E3, but it didn’t take off quite as well as she likely would have hoped.

Randy Orton

Whatever your opinion is on Randy Orton and his persona in the wrestling ring, you have to give him credit for choosing to play such an impressive console, not to mention his actual game choices.

In the Instagram photo above, Orton showed himself settled in with his Nintendo Switch – on-the-go as ever – before hopping onto a flight. With the stand for the Switch coupled with the portable controller, it allows for a similar feeling of plugging it up to a TV albeit with a much smaller screen.

Orton also couldn’t have picked a better game than Breath of the Wild to pass the time with his boy, Link, a game that’s currently up for the Game of the Year award. Now all he needs is WWE 2K18 to finally be released for the Switch and he’ll be set.

Mike Shinoda

Tapping into another realm of celebrity status, Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park also appears to be a Nintendo nerd as well with his new Nintendo Switch.

Co-founder of Linkin Park and a skilled musician with talents that include being a guitar player, songwriter, keyboardist, and vocalist, Shinoda has an impressive track record when it comes to his music. Linkin Park has no short supply of fans, but Shinoda no doubt gained quite a few more when he posted a picture to his Instagram account that showed the musician with his Switch.

Like Randy Orton, Shinoda made an excellent choice in showing himself playing Breath of the Wild in his post. Aside from being brilliant unintentional marketing for Nintendo and their latest Zelda game, the game making an appearance more than once in celebrities’ gaming catalogs should speak to the game’s influence. It was even selected for Shinoda by his fans through a Twitter poll, though many said they’d like to see him try out other games as well.

Chrissy Tiegen

One celebrity who more recently made the news for her gaming preferences is Chrissy Tiegen, a celebrity with a passion for modeling and apparently for the Nintendo Switch as well.

Deviating from the Breath of the Wild trend, Tiegen instead showed herself playing what’s likely the only other Switch game of the year that could rival the Zelda entry: Super Mario Odyssey. Tiegen was watching a Lakers game with some prime seats that most people would’ve fought over, but instead of paying attention to the game, Tiegen was much more invested in the Nintendo Switch that she was playing in her lap.

But the video in the tweet wouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to those who follow Tiegen and her video game interests. The day before she shared the video, Teigen was asking for help in Super Mario Odyssey.

“I’m at the top of the building with the stupid snake monster thing,” she wrote on Twitter. “Then we go down to fight and I can’t kill him. My 3D aim sucks. Maybe I should take off the controller from the console and play like wii?”

U.S. Soccer Team

The last few Nintendo fans on this list aren’t just one celebrity in particular, but rather they’re a group of athletes who prove that playing as a team when off the field is just as important as putting in work during their soccer matches.

A tweet from the U.S. Soccer team’s official account showed several members of the team sitting inside a team bus, more than one of them intently focused on the Nintendo Switches that they brought with them. The text within the tweet even makes a reference to a couple of red shells, an item that’s almost as dreaded as the blue shell in Mario Kart games. Sliding around and tossing powerups at other racers in Mario Kart appears to be the popular game within the team, but you can catch glimpses of other games being played on their trip as well.

These are just a few of the celebrities who have shown themselves to be Nintendo fans, but there are still plenty more out there such as The Weeknd and other athletic teams, all of which can be seen here through a pretty comprehensive thread about the celebrity gamers.